The Awakening of Death
When the power of Death finally pierced the void and surged upward without end, I came face to face with the true form of the colossal sky that had been staring down at me all this time. The bizarre, majestic ceiling of flesh that had completely blanketed the entire continent was never empty space or some natural phenomenon. It was a single, overwhelming living being.
A super-giant whale, darker than pitch black, so utterly dark it seemed to swallow every faint glimmer of light around it, filled my entire field of vision. This creature, whose size defied all reason and scale, drifted slowly through the empty air, fixing its enormous red eye on me as I rose from the ground. That eye looked as if it had swallowed an entire continent whole.
Each casual flick of its massive fin warped the surrounding air currents into something grotesque, instantly reducing dozens-of-meters-wide rock fragments to fine dust that scattered in every direction. Its sheer mass and presence radiated a chilling terror that crushed the soul just by being witnessed. Every breath I drew felt like my lungs were being crushed under insane atmospheric pressure.
"Hey, even those demon bastards didn't know. But you do, don't you?"
I stopped dead in mid-air, explosively releasing sticky, heavy black mana across my entire body, and hurled the words straight at the black whale's face. The crushing pressure pouring from its massive frame squeezed my soul without mercy, but it could not break my vicious obsession to tear this fucking world apart and escape. The stubborn venom I had forged through thousands of falls and struggles kept my spine rigid.
It was a distant, majestic resonance rising from the depths of the whale's enormous body. Not mere sound, but a bizarre telepathy that vibrated the entire space. The moment I met its gigantic eye, I sensed clear inner intelligence. Yet it held nothing like the refined speech or clear purpose of the Seven Lords of Sin whose heads I had smashed until now. It was only the dreadful, fragmented mumbling of an intelligence barely above that of a primordial beast.
All my expectations of having a proper conversation and finding a way out of this hell shattered miserably in a single instant.
"...Fuck. We can't communicate."
A crushing wave of futility and disappointment made my brow tighten until it felt like it would split. I had slaughtered every ruler of this region, ripped out their tongues and gouged out their eyes, and climbed all the way here only to discover that the final master of the world was nothing more than a giant beast incapable of speech. Uncontrollable rage and irritation erupted from the depths of my chest like a volcano.
The weight of all the years I had endured in this damned world with nothing but the single-minded obsession to return to my original one, bones shattering along the way, transformed entirely into cruel killing intent aimed at this whale bastard.
"Fine. Killing it first should give me something."
I twisted my lips into a savage grin and tightened my grip on the bone dagger in my left hand. If words failed, I would beat it to death until its limbs were torn apart, grab its crushed throat, and forcibly rip out the clues. That was all there was to it.
I compressed the sticky black mana, fused from the seven essences, to its absolute limit at the tip of the dagger and launched a recklessly fierce first strike toward the black whale's enormous red eye.
KWAAAAAANG—!
The instant the black shockwave slammed into the whale's face and black currents exploded outward, the creature that had been silently looming as the continent's ceiling finally began to move its colossal body in earnest.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE—!
It was an omen of annihilation that no word like "catastrophe" could fully capture. With one single heave of the super-giant whale's body, the entire region of the Void crumpled and shattered like a sheet of paper. The ground flipped over completely. Rocks hundreds of meters tall evaporated into dust and vanished. The unimaginable mana contained in its core surged wildly outward, claiming the entire space before my eyes as its perfect domain in an instant.
Even the super-sensory field surrounding my body was nearly paralyzed for a split second under its gigantic pressure. And that was not all. The moment the black whale's continent-sized red eye flashed with a chilling light, an unidentified sacred yet ominous radiance I had never seen before began to swirl around it.
It was the power of Creation in its raw form.
Inside the space the whale dominated, bizarre and lethal weapons were created in real time from pure nothingness, pouring out and filling my vision. Tens of thousands of sharp, giant thorn spears were born from thin air and rained down on me like a waterfall. The space itself in every direction turned into solid steel walls, mercilessly crushing inward.
Every collision between my sticky black mana and the whale's ruthless authority of Creation caused the surrounding space to crack like glass and shatter into pieces. The mere aftermath tore the skin from my entire body, sending blood scattering through the air.
"Khaak...! Krrgh!"
It was brutally strong. Completely different in both level and dimension from the demon bastards I had faced before. Even the transcendent strength that had beaten Pride and Wrath like dogs was barely holding on against the merciless authority this whale emitted without thought.
Invisible masses of enormous gravity it created in the air crushed my body without mercy. The power of Creation pressing from every side pulverized my flesh at the cellular level and choked off my breath.
Thud—! Crunch! BOOOOM!
My entire ribcage collapsed and shattered. My limbs twisted in grotesque directions. My flesh was ripped apart like rags, and black blood poured into the air like a waterfall. My body was collapsing from the inside out. I had reached the brink of death, where the gates of the underworld seemed visible right before my eyes.
My head felt like it would split. My consciousness blurred. My vision flooded with dark red. It was a moment of utter despair.
Yet even then, the seven fused black manas pooled in my heart responded to my dying body's death throes. They raged madly inside me, fluctuating with unprecedented violence. Even as my flesh burst and my bones turned to powder, my survival instinct refused to die.
'You think I'll die meaninglessly here, you son of a bitch?'
Spitting a gout of black blood through my broken teeth, I forced my fading eyes open once more with a piercing glare. Dropped into this shitty, grotesque world, suffering like a dog, chewing the raw flesh of disgusting bugs just to crawl this far—I could not be crushed by one giant whale and reduced to dust.
I had to survive. No matter what. I had to survive and walk proudly back to my home, to my original world where my bed waited. My vicious will to live and the destructive energy surging through me at the threshold of half-death began to mix strangely with the sticky black mana swirling in my heart, triggering a miraculous fusion.
At that extreme critical point where my body was being destroyed, my power finally achieved true awakening.
WHOOSH—!
In that instant, the sticky black mana inside me evolved into an even more bizarre and lethal form of apocalypse. Above the mud-like black currents, ashen, chilling smoke rose—the kind that could corrode every living thing in an instant and forcibly declare its end. This was the true, raw authority of destruction I had realized myself after devouring every essence of the seven lords and crawling to the boundary of death.
It was the power of Death.
The black mana now enveloping my body carried the absolute nature of death that would devour the lifespan of space itself and rot existence with the slightest touch. The shattered bones were forcibly bound by the black currents, creaking back into place. The torn flesh instantly sprouted black veins and reattached itself.
Half-corpse in appearance, I bared my teeth and grinned savagely at the whale. The bone dagger in my hand radiated a terrifying aura of death, as if it could rot even the merciless light of Creation the creature wielded and erase it without a trace.
"The power of Creation? I'll personally teach you what the power of Death is, you son of a bitch."
Crack. Crunch!
I exploded the newly evolved black mana of death throughout my body and instantly rotted away the steel walls of Creation that had been crushing me. The whale's own mana, which had dominated the space, screamed as it was corrupted by my aura of death.
Gripping the dagger loaded with every ounce of my power of death, I charged head-on toward the black whale's colossal form as it rushed forward once more to erase the entire space. To deliver the true end to this damned world.